A Platinum Pudding

I suppose that after years of living in a landscape that looks like this day after day all the winter long, one might find comfort, a certain monochromatic synchronicity, a peace, in a bowl of pure white pudding.

I still don't know if it's for me (this pudding or this winter here in Minnesota) but I'm coming around to its charms. I've taken on the task of returning the annual Rommegrot to its more authentic roots, and in the process, I've eaten many bowls of this ivory mush.

I'm not much a fan of all-white food. I like acidity, punch, big flavors. These things are usually yellow, red or green. And meat, of course, which runs from brown to pink.

Before I married into a Scandinavian family I had heard of the famed blandness of their holiday meals, but nothing prepared me for the all-white table. To be fair, some of the dishes wore sepia-colored dapplings, like the brown spheres dotting the lefse and the shake of cinnamon scattered on the rommegrot, but for the most part everything was pale--eleganlty pale: Skinned white potatoes mashed with milk; steamed lutefisk bearing a dribble of melted butter; meatballs in cream gravy; lefse and butter; white rolls; yifte, a whipped-cream-topped trifle that hid its wild cranberry interior from view, striking me as so very Lutheran; and rommegrot, a warm cinnamon-flecked cream pudding. It tasted as it looked: plain, good, comforting and, like your friend who hasn't had a date in a long time, in desperate need of some spice.

Nonetheless each dish, when isolated from the platinum madness, has its own appeal. I do love the rommegrot, especially when made with thick farm cream and splashed with plenty of butter and strong vietnamese cinnamon--which is how I made it the other day:

The technique is unlike anything I've ever encountered: you reduce the cream by about a quarter, then sift over flour and cook until you have a sandy, thick lump--kind of like the beginning of roux. As it simmers, the butterfat leaches out of the flour mixture and pools on top. You scoop it off and reserve it for ladling on top when it's finished. Then you whisk in milk until it resembles a thick pudding, and season with a little sugar and a pinch of salt. (By the way, I love the translation from the Norwegian that the computer came up with for one recipe I saw today: "Smak with salt." I may have to start saying that.) Cook for another couple of minutes to rid it of all flour taste, then pour into a bowl, top with the reserved butter and sprinkle with cinnamon and sugar.

Rommegrot falls in the tradition of other rich desserts which reduce cream from an already life-threatening richness to an alarmingly thick, and fattening, custard: dulce de leche, English clotted cream, Indian kulfi. The difference is, those cultures tend to eat those things by the spoonful, not the bowlful. But they're generally not in the insulation business, as we are in the far north. Here, we need some serious protection against the cold. Best to start on the inside.

Another snowy vista to illustrate the point. This, the view from my house, a frozen-over Indian Creek. The tufts of grass are wild rice and the speck in the distance is my husband skating.